Steve Griffin: A few fulfilling days fishing the Superior shore

Steve Griffin

Published
2:02 am EDT, Thursday, May 10, 2018

A pair of steelhead lies tethered on a Lake Superior beach near Wawa, Ontario. The daily and possession limit under the more liberal of two fishing licenses is two fish per day, but one can continue fishing on a catch-and-release basis. (Steve Griffin/Hearst Michigan) less

A pair of steelhead lies tethered on a Lake Superior beach near Wawa, Ontario. The daily and possession limit under the more liberal of two fishing licenses is two fish per day, but one can continue fishing on ... more

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A pair of steelhead lies tethered on a Lake Superior beach near Wawa, Ontario. The daily and possession limit under the more liberal of two fishing licenses is two fish per day, but one can continue fishing on a catch-and-release basis. (Steve Griffin/Hearst Michigan) less

A pair of steelhead lies tethered on a Lake Superior beach near Wawa, Ontario. The daily and possession limit under the more liberal of two fishing licenses is two fish per day, but one can continue fishing on ... more

Steve Griffin: A few fulfilling days fishing the Superior shore

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WAWA, Ontario -- This is not the whole story of our trip, the four days working the Ontario shoreline where rivers feed Lake Superior between Wawa and the Soo.

We extracted a handful of steelhead from the froth, keeping a few and releasing a few more, while collecting mental vignettes. A few of them follow:

Driving the coatline last Tuesday, we were only mildly surprised to see several bays still ice-locked. We'd seen ice-bound boats from the bridge over the St. Marys River and locks between the U.S. and Canada, after all. But by the southern edge of Lake Superior Provincial Park, the big lake was mostly open, although big mounds of ice lay on its shoreline.

Soon, I'd rigged a spawn bag, cast, and set the rod in a holder. (Fishers here can use only one rod. People are either spawn watchers or spoon tossers. Few switch.) I began watching the sun and waves eat at the ice, erasing one block the size of my Subaru in a half-dozen hours. A couple of fish interrupted my observations.

In mid-afternoon, the nearby river began flushing out ice, sticks and leaves, and by day's end, fishing was nearly impossible in the mud-tinged soup.

A northern white cedar limb I snagged seemed to put up a good fight in the current -- and wowed me with its sinus-clearing scent when it emerged from cold water into stunningly clear air. Battered by the river against rock and ice, it exuded fragrance.

A Wawa friend we'd met on previous trips had waved us off each of two ice-bound weeks previous, before pointing to last week as prime.

Unsure if he'd be able to fish with us, he explained tactfully in a text message: "Good luck. I will try to get done what I have to do. Maybe I might sneak out there later."

We did meet up for a coffee, when he offered insight into Wawa culture: "We don't say 'I love you' up here any more," said Derek. "We say, 'I'm going to Tim Horton's; can I bring you something?' That means you really care."

At dark one night, we talked at water's edge with a couple of young guys who'd been fishing more intently than most. Turns out they'd won the Wawa Salmon Derby last summer, in both Chinook salmon and lake trout categories. They fish hard and fish a lot, working seven days on, seven days off, in a gold mine west of Wawa.

A gold mine!

Whom do you know that works in any kind of mine, let alone a gold mine? Good work, they said, one having eight years in, the other a dozen. "Pays well, and you can live at home," said the longer-tenured.

(Other anglers had told us of chasing seasonal work in places as far-flung as Alberta, "driving diesel to the frackers" in its oil fields. Some had retired to buy and run resorts near Wawa; the trucker now delivered propane to cottagers, part-time.)

Our new friends would fish this river mouth until full dark, then patrol the shoreline elsewhere in search of smelts. That's what they call them up here -- smelts, not smelt, in speech and on signs at stands and restaurants announcing the spring return of the local favorite.

One local angler suggested we break trail a couple of hundred yards from the highway to the Lake Superior shoreline. A steelhead hotspot was there, he said, beyond the brush that seemed impenetrable to anyone but a moose.

Separately, another fisherman, just as knowledgeable, said of the idea, "Don't do it. Not with those (longish) rods. You'll break fishing rods."

"You will hate yourself."

We knew that feeling from other adventures. We did not break that trail.